Wednesday, October 23, 2013

‘HealthCare.gov is in De Facto Shutdown’

WaPo's Ezra Klein talks to Robert Laszewski is president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates:
Ezra Klein: We last talked about 10 days ago. So in the interim, what are your insurance industry sources saying has changed on HealthCare.gov?
Bob Laszewski: Really nothing. There are two sides to this coin. The numbers of people enrolling and then the problems in processing enrollment information between federal government and insurance companies. If I were spinning for the White House I would say enrollment is up 50 percent! But that’s because it’s up from like 10 a day to 15 a day. I haven’t talked to large insurers seeing more than 100 enrollments a day.
On the backdoor, the 834 connections, I had one client tell me they saw some improvement in the error rate, so I checked with three other clients, and they said they hadn’t seen any improvement.
EK: So most people can’t actually buy insurance through the Web site yet, and those who can may not be sending the right data to insurers?
BL: I almost have the sense that HealthCare.gov is in de facto shutdown. Here’s why: Government has to fix the back end before the front end. The demand here is real. I don’t think anyone can dispute that millions of people want to sign up. So if they fix the front end for consumers and thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people being enrolled before they fix the back end, we’ll have a catastrophic mess.
When insurers are getting 10 or 20 or 50 enrollments a day they can clean the errors up manually. But they can’t do that for thousands of enrollments a day. They have to automate at some point. So I think the Obama administration doesn’t want to cross the red line to shut the system down, but I think this is effectively a shutdown in which they don’t say they’ve shut it down but it basically is shut down.
EK: What about using the phone number? 
BL: Telling people to call the 1-800 number isn’t any good either. The government has to transmit the enrollment information over the computer system to the insurer anyway.
The other problem with signing up over the phone is that in most states consumers will have five or six or seven or eight insurance companies each offering at least five or six plans. The typical person will be faced with 30 to 50 plan options. I don’t know how a consumer can have a conversation about which plan is best for them over the phone.

More of the interview, here.

4 comments:

  1. This really sounds like socialism:

    "The other problem with signing up over the phone is that in most states consumers will have five or six or seven or eight insurance companies each offering at least five or six plans. The typical person will be faced with 30 to 50 plan options. "

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    Replies
    1. And those options have a strong government influence. The government dictates what insurance companies (contractors for the state) must cover.

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    2. You are correct, Jerry. Fascism is far more appropriate to describe this.

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    3. I kinda agree, Richie.

      As long as the sheeple can BEG for government rescue, the better the chance our "government" will collapse.

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